In a March 9th post on Meta Ezra and an article published by the Cornell Daily Sun, I wrongly called out Tim Marchell, Cornell's Director of Mental Health Initiatives, for using an incident from before the barriers went up to argue that Cornell's barriers were already saving lives. It appears Marchell never used this incident to argue his point. Both pieces were written in response to a February 25, 2011 article in the Sun by Jeff Stein that contained a hyperlink to an Ithaca Journal article on the February 2010 incident within a quote by Marchell--implying that this incident was an example of a barrier saving a life.

Back in February, I emailed Stein to determine why these hyperlinks were included, and he explained that Marchell had provided the articles to back up his point that the barriers had saved lives. I emailed Marchell to get his side of the story, but received no reply.

Last week, Marchell finally returned that email, explaining that he never cited the February 2010 incident as an example of a barrier saving a life, which would indeed have been ludicrous. Both Marchell and Stein sent me copies of their communications on the subject this week, and it seems like Stein made an innocent mistake in interpreting Marchell's email, due to the way some text was clumped together.

Meta Ezra thanks Marchell for bringing the error to our attention. We are comitted to providing the best information available regarding the barrier issue and will happily correct any errors in our reporting.